MIAMI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has withdrawn a death warrant for the first time since taking office, calling off a man\u2019s execution just days before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the nation\u2019s busiest death chamber.<\/p>\n
The Republican governor, who has aggressively used the death penalty in his final term, signed a letter Thursday withdrawing the death warrant for William Lee Thompson. The 74-year-old inmate had been set to die Tuesday for the murder and kidnapping of Sally Ivester in 1976. <\/p>\n
A second Florida execution scheduled for the same day is still set to take place. James Robertson, 63, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and waived all appeals in the 2008 strangling of Frank Hart while the men were cellmates at Charlotte Correctional Institution, north of Fort Myers. Robertson told investigators he killed the other man so he could be moved to death row.<\/p>\n
DeSantis did not provide a reason in the letter for withdrawing Thompson\u2019s death warrant but had temporarily stayed his execution last month pending a psychiatric evaluation. Florida prison officials, however, had still been preparing for Thompson\u2019s potential execution next week. <\/p>\n
Thompson\u2019s attorney, Bri Lacy, said they\u2019re relieved by the result.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Thompson suffers from dementia and his health is failing \u2014 both of which were gravely concerning with an impending execution,\u201d Lacy said in an email. \u201cNow that Mr. Thompson is no longer under a death warrant, we hope FDOC (Florida Department of Corrections) will relocate him to an adequate medical facility and provide the care he needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move comes at a time of escalating attention on the death penalty in the U.S.<\/p>\n
In Tennessee, Christa Pike survived an execution attempt last week despite receiving two lethal doses of pentobarbital. On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan would be livestreamed.<\/p>\n
Thompson will remain on Florida\u2019s death row, and a new death warrant could be signed for him in the future. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for DeSantis did not immediately return an email seeking comment. <\/p>\n
Florida carried out 19 executions last year, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In July, Florida became the first state in nearly a decade to execute two prisoners in one day.<\/p>\n
Fischer writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has withdrawn a death warrant for the first time since taking office, calling off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[166931,166,408,4536,13152,2683,166929,9100,28,7877,18231,30,29,165038,166930,2391,1933,75728],"class_list":["post-423475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-charlotte-correctional-institution","tag-day","tag-death-penalty","tag-death-row","tag-death-warrant","tag-desantis","tag-execution-last-month","tag-first-time","tag-florida","tag-florida-department","tag-florida-execution","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-james-robertson","tag-letter-thursday","tag-man","tag-murder","tag-thompson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}